Search: “Terrorists”

For many people the solution to terrorism is quite simple.  Those who are fighting with groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State and others can be killed in airstrikes, drone strikes or armed combat.  Those who are captured alive can be turned over to local officials or brought home for trial where they can be […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 7, 2018 Pop quiz!  What is Canada’s ‘national game’?  Duh it’s hockey of course (or ‘ice hockey’ as the rest of the world knows it as if it needed to be distinguished from ‘field hockey’).  What with the NHL playoffs on and one Canadian team still […]

We have just celebrated Mother’s Day in Canada, a chance for children to recognise and give thanks for their mothers.  Mothers are, after all, often the bedrock of families. It is they who give birth to the next generation, nurture their sons and daughters through the early years of life and usually act as confidantes […]

When I was at Public Saftey Canada I had the opportunity to work in outreach with some outstanding civil servants.  They would organise sessions across the country with a variety of communities to engage on a wide range of topics all related in some way to public safety.  I was invited on some of them […]

In the wake of the van attack in Toronto last week there has been a lot of ink spilled and airtime filled on the problem of what to do with young men. Regardless of motive, it seems that serious violence is carried out overwhelmingly by the male half of the human species.  Many researchers and […]

Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said it best in referring to the Canadian-US relationship: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt”.  We Canadians do spend a […]

To say that we in the West live in a sex-craved society is putting things mildly.  From TV shows where sexual humour is pervasive (for what it is worth, I think The Big Bang Theory would be a lot funnier without so many sex jokes and no, I am not a prude!) to advertising it […]

This piece appeared in the April 23 edition of The Hill Times In a very funny Monty Python skit John Cleese plays a drill sergeant who is trying to teach a bunch of skinny recruits to defend themselves against foes wielding fresh fruit (oranges, apples, grapefruit, pomegranates….)  with typical hilarious results.  Cleese gets the underwear-clad […]

I have a confession to make.  I am a huge New York Times fan.  I have read it religiously for decades and even in my retirement I buy a copy that a downtown Ottawa news seller sets aside for me on a daily basis (thanks Comerford Cigar Store!).  No one source is exhaustive or 100% […]

Now that Alexandre Bissonnette has pleaded guilty to killing six people (and wounding 19 others) at a Quebec City mosque in January 2017  and we are seeing at last some of the evidence mounted against him (largely his 911 call and his jail cell ‘confession’), we are getting a much clearer picture of why he […]